PRESIDENT OBAMA CALLS FOR CALM, REASON IN RESPONSE TO TERRORISM

President Barack Obama spoke to the nation last night in a
short address that touched mainly on terrorism and gun controls.He outlined no new foreign policy pronouncements
to fight ISIS in the Middle East and rest assured that this omission is fueling
new right wing attacks calling into question his competence, his patriotism and
his inability to voice the phrase “Islamic terrorism.”Frankly, in this era of irrational responses
to virtually every domestic and international issue from climate change to
childhood vaccinations, the President’s calm, reasoned and low key approach to
the latest events out in San Bernardino and Paris are both welcome and, from my
point of view, entirely correct.In
comparison, the Republican candidates for President of the United States have
offered to fight Obama tooth and nail but have nothing in the way of practical
strategies to fight ISIS other than what is already being done by the Administration.

Obama is right.There
is no quick and easy means of countering ISIS and all the rhetoric about how
inept and ineffective is his foreign policy is simply so much partisan
bullshit.In fact, under more normal
circumstances (i.e. when Congressional Republicans didn’t vow to make a sitting
President a one-termer nor pledge to undermine every single policy initiative a
President proposes) there would be near universal calls for Americans to come
together, to unite and rally around our President no matter what his or her
party affiliation in such tense and fearful times as we are facing today.

But these are not normal times.Every Republican Presidential candidate in
one form or another has depicted the current state of affairs across the
country as somehow desperate, despicable, and diminished.This, of course, in the face of reality where
we have recovered quite smartly from the effects of the worldwide economic
collapse in 2008, where U.S. troops are not engaged in active warfare in the
Middle East, where this administration has created more jobs since 2009 than
all the other Western European nations combined, where interest rates on car
loans and home loans are lower than they have ever been.This, in reality, is the current state of
affairs in America, just not among the Tea Baggers, the Freedom Caucus and the
Right Winger’s whose reality is, in reality, operating in a parallel reality
that has no basis in actual reality.

TED CRUZ SUPPORTING PRESIDENT OBAMA

As for Obama’s foreign policy viz the mess that is the
Middle East currently, I think he is on the right track in both countering and
containing ISIS.The right wingers want
the U.S. to “bomb them back to the Stone Age” the self-same foreign policy that
created this mess in the first place. Consider, too, that after
all, our “ally,” Saudi Arabia is not interested in fighting their Sunni
brethren, ISIS, but rather fighting Shiite Iran and their allies in a continuation of the centuries old Sunni-Shiite war; Russia, too,
is more interested in protecting its Middle East ally, Bashar al-Assad, than
fighting ISIS, and until the Paris terrorist attacks our European allies haven’t
played a significant role in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.Now they are. But it took the deaths of 130 innocent people.

Obama and his advisers seem to understand the goals and
objectives of ISIS including the fundamental importance of gaining territory
under the guise of the Caliphate that they proclaimed a year ago.In
addition, ISIS’s goal is to foment a worldwide religious war, such a condition
that would demonstrate that their prophecy of the commencement of the End of
Times has come true.Thus, foolhardy
proclamations that we are engaged in a worldwide religious war – Christianity
versus Islam – only reinforces ISIS’s theocracy and strengthens their
propaganda appeals to disaffected Muslims and will have the result of
recruiting even more adherents.The
Obama Administration hasn’t been perfect in its response to the Arab Spring nor
in its tactics in countering ISIS, but I think that as Obama said last night,
the strategy is smart, relentless and strong.It will take time to prevail but such a strategy is nuanced – something
that right wingers seem to have no concept of – and designed to tread carefully
through the minefields of Middle Eastern politics and religious strife without
supporting and corroboratingISIS’s
fundamental precepts.

If you think about it, there is nothing much that the
Government - local or Federal – could have done to prevent the San Bernardino terrorist
attacks just as there was nothing much that could have been done to prevent the
attacks at Columbine, Charleston, Boston or Newtown save implanting computer
chips – like those for cats and dogs – that would monitor our every activity, our every utterance and our every inner thought 24 -7.This is a sad
reality but the facts of the matter is that we have always had such terrorists
in our midst and it is only after such attacks that occasionally practical
responses occur like the Assault Weapons Ban passed by Congress in 1994 and
which Congress allowed to expire in 2004.Today, in 2015, after the deaths of 450 people from domestic terrorist
attacks since 2004, our politicians are still in the thrall of the National
Rifle Association and locked into doing nothing.That,
in fact, is the situation that we face here in America today and not one of a
secret Muslim in the White House. And, perhaps,
it is for this reason that we should all be afraid.

By the way, I haven’t
seen any evidence of the rampant fear that seems to be spreading like wildfire
across the nation post-San Bernardino killings that the media keeps on yelling
about.I don’t know, maybe it’s because
we here in D.C. like our brothers and sisters up Interstate 95 in New York
City, have been subjected to terrorist attacks and understand the random,
irrational and un-predictable nature of such attacks.Recall, if you will, it’s not only on 9-11
that D.C. was attacked but more recently 12 people – innocents all – were
gunned down by Aaron Alexis in the Navy Yard back in 2013.If you drive straight down 8th
Street, where I live, for a mile you will find yourself in front of the Navy
Yard’s Main Gate.If you turn right on M
Street that borders the Navy Yard, you will pass by the McDonald’s where I
indulge myself once a month in a Quarter Pounder with cheese meal.Then there was the women who tired to smash
through the White House gates and wound up dead in a hail of bullets next to
the Supreme Court Building just three blocks West from me.Thankfully, the young child was who was with
her was not harmed. But this how close I
live to terrorist killing sites every day.And I’m not afraid.

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